ttyforce

Text user interface for installing Town OS. Presented during disk provisioning, it handles network configuration and disk setup through an nmtui-style interface.

Usage

# Detect hardware and print the manifest to stdout
ttyforce detect

# Detect hardware, save manifest to a file
ttyforce detect -o hardware.toml

# Print manifest from an existing hardware file (no auto-detection)
ttyforce detect -i fixtures/hardware/ethernet_4disk_same.toml

# Run a scripted fixture scenario and print the resulting operations
ttyforce detect --fixture fixtures/scenarios/full_install_ethernet_4disk.toml

# Detect real hardware, run the TUI with a mock executor,
# and print the operations that would be performed (dry run)
ttyforce output

# Same dry run, but load hardware from a file
ttyforce output -i fixtures/hardware/ethernet_1disk.toml

# Save the dry-run operations manifest to a file
ttyforce output -o operations.toml

# Detect hardware and launch the real installer
ttyforce run

# Launch the real installer with hardware from a file (mock executor)
ttyforce run -i fixtures/hardware/ethernet_1disk.toml

Subcommands

Subcommand	Description
`detect`	Detect hardware and print the hardware manifest. With `--fixture`, runs a scripted scenario and prints the resulting operations manifest instead.
`output`	Detect real hardware (or load via `-i`), run the full TUI with a mock executor so no real changes are made, then print the operations that would have been performed.
`run`	Detect hardware (or load via `-i`) and launch the real installer. Uses the real executor when auto-detecting, mock executor when loading from file.

Global flags

Flag	Description
`-i, --input <FILE>`	Load hardware from a manifest file instead of auto-detecting.
`-o, --output <FILE>`	Write output to a file instead of stdout.

How it works

Network

The installer prioritizes getting online with minimal user interaction:

If a wired connection with link+carrier is already up, it selects it and advances directly to disk setup — no probing or DHCP reconfiguration
If ethernet has link but no carrier, it brings the interface up step by step (enable, check link, DHCP, IP check, connectivity checks)
If ethernet is dead or absent, it falls back to wifi
Wifi presents a scannable network list with signal strength and security info
Supports WPA2/WPA3 password entry and QR code configuration

Disks

Disks are automatically grouped by make and model. The filesystem is always Btrfs. RAID options are presented based on disk count:

1 disk — single drive
2 disks — RAID1 (Btrfs mirror)
3+ disks — RAID5 (Btrfs striped with parity)

The installation target mount point defaults to /town-os.

Final screen

After installation completes (or is aborted), the final screen offers three choices:

Reboot — restart the machine into the new system
Exit — return to the shell
Power Off — shut down

Hardware detection

Detection uses systemd dbus interfaces with sysfs/command fallbacks. Negative results from networkd are never trusted on their own — the installer always falls through to direct system checks (sysfs carrier, ip addr show, ip route, etc.):

Network interfaces — systemd-networkd (org.freedesktop.network1) for link/carrier state, wpa_supplicant dbus for wifi scanning, sysfs and ip command as fallbacks
Disks — UDisks2 (org.freedesktop.UDisks2) for block device enumeration and drive metadata
DNS — systemd-resolved (org.freedesktop.resolve1) for name resolution, with dig/getent fallback

Testing

# Unit + fixture + scenario + playbook + CLI tests (includes lint)
make test

# Integration tests in a container (requires podman, uses sudo if needed)
make test-integration

Fixtures

Hardware manifests in fixtures/hardware/ define simulated hardware configurations:

ethernet_4disk_same — ethernet + 4 identical disks
ethernet_1disk — ethernet + 1 disk
wifi_1disk — wifi only + 1 disk
wifi_crowded_1disk — crowded wifi neighborhood
wifi_ethernet_* — both interfaces present
wifi_dead_ethernet_* — dead ethernet, wifi available
mixed_drives_* — workstation/server/homelab with mixed drive vendors

Use with detect or output via -i:

ttyforce detect -i fixtures/hardware/ethernet_4disk_same.toml
ttyforce output -i fixtures/hardware/ethernet_4disk_same.toml

Scenarios

Scripted test cases in fixtures/scenarios/ feed inputs and mock responses to the state machine non-interactively:

ttyforce detect --fixture fixtures/scenarios/full_install_ethernet_4disk.toml

Playbooks

Playbooks in fixtures/playbooks/ extend scenarios with assertions — expected screen transitions, operation sequences, and final state. These are verified by cargo test --test playbook_tests.

License

MIT

ttyforce 0.2.0-alpha2